Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is one of the great thinkers who stood at the origins of modern European science. He studied at the Jesuit college of La Fleche. After military service he moved to the Netherlands, where he spent 20 years in solitary scientific and philosophical studies. The persecution of Dutch theologians forced him to move to Sweden (1649), where he died. . . . (Descares, Cottingham, Stoothoff & Murdoch 1).
In his works there are organically combined interest in the ontological problem, the development and justification of the method of knowledge, in-depth research and discoveries in the field of mathematics, physics, cosmogony, and physiology. His research is inextricably linked with the philosophical ideas of a single material extended substance that formed the basis for the emerging of mechanistic picture of the world.
The paramount importance of philosophical questions Descartes developed was the question of the method of knowledge. Descartes was certainly looking for a reliable source for the fundamental principle of all knowledge and the method by which it is possible, based on the fundamental principle of this construct as a significant building of all science. Descartes doubts about the truth of generally accepted knowledge. However Descartes’ doubt is not an agnostic or sceptic belief, but only preliminary methodological procedure, the instrument through which it is possible to deduce certain undeniable fundamental truth. Descartes argues that a person has no certain knowledge of the existence of his body, though he could be an animal or spirit left the body, dreaming that he is a man; there is certainty in the existence of his mind. The content of thoughts and beliefs may be false, but the fact of thinking and beliefs are authentic. The conclusion is in idea of the substantiality of thought: I think, therefore I exist. . . . (Descartes et al. 8).
Based on this thesis, “Descartes notes: since we got this truth not through the senses or deduction from other truths, then there must be a method that allowed us to get it” (Garber 106). This, according to Descartes is method of clear and distinct ideas: what we think clearly and distinctly must be true. If there is an omnipotent and good God, the possibility of fraud is excluded. Therefore, further proves the existence of God.
Descartes proves the existence of God from the idea of God in man. To create the idea of a perfect being, a person has to be perfect, but because he is not that, the idea of God given to man from the outside, by God himself. Descartes argues “Just the fact that I exist and have an idea of a perfect being, or God, proves with utmost clarity that God exists.” (Descartes et al. 24).
The main thing for Descartes in the knowledge of God is the reliability of this knowledge. Descartes comes from the fact, which is believed to be accurate: we exist and are endowed with the notion of a perfect being. It goes to prove the nature of the human being to God, offering thus an anthropological proof of God’s existence.
Since the idea of God originally given to man, Descartes called it innate. The idea of God is embodied in a person, in the words of Descartes, “as the artist’s stamp.” A man for Descartes is a reflection of God. Descartes notes that because God created a person, that person believes that he is created in His image and likeness of him and image of God is the idea of this similarity. . . . (Boyle 45).
The idea of God is the action of God in man, since this idea is not a creation of man. Through an innate idea of the existence of God is manifested in man. According to the principle “I think, therefore I exist” Descartes builds proof “I think about God, therefore God exists.” (Nadler 62). He believed that the basis of self-existence is in the God existence. The idea of God to man is the truest idea of a man. Descartes argues “of all the ideas that we have, it is the clear and distinct and therefore the truest”. (Descartes 33).
Perfect God does not deceive people. This gives us confidence in the method: all that seems to us to be as self-evident as the assertion cogito ergo sum, shall be as valid knowledge. This is the idea of the Cartesian rationalist theory of knowledge: the criterion of the truth of knowledge is not empirical support (as in empiricism), and the ideas that appear clear and distinct for our mind. . . . (Garber 205).
Descartes argues that it is just as self-evident as its own existence and the existence of consciousness, is the existence of a thinking being (soul) and extended life (matter). Descartes introduces the doctrine of the thinking thing (soul) and extended thing (matter) as the only existing (other than God) of two fundamentally different phenomena. The soul is only the thinking, but not extended. Matter is only extended, but not thinking. Matter refers to using only one of mechanics (mechanical-materialistic view of the world), while the soul is free and rational. . . . (Nadler 115).
Descartes proves the human spirit has the immediate certainty of its existence in itself, which is what makes his spirit. God is the principle of reliability only for what is different from the spirit to the world of sense. God is the principle of validation, its objective authorization, confirming that what is clear and distinct for the spirit is therefore reliable, and in fact is true. . . . (Boyle 74).
I believe that Descartes successfully proves the existence of God. His ideas of God are connected with person’s mind and the ability to think. Descartes in fact made a philosophical revolution, creating a new world of thought. Descartes based his argumentation in the creation of a philosophical system on personal experience and the concept of personal mind but in in his opinion it is not just a person having a dialogue with God, it is the idea of personality as a thinking substance.
Works Cited
Garber, D. Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy Through Cartesian Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.
Boyle, A. D. Descartes on Innate Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print.
Descartes, R., Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Murdoch, D. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
